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Freezing Eggs, and Hoarding My Fertility

When I awoke in my fertility clinic’s recovery room after having nine eggs extracted and frozen, I felt a profound calm settle over my body. I could not make the man I had fallen in love with at the time want kids. But at age 36, I could soften the fallout. By stashing away some good eggs, I had found a way to keep alive my dream of having a family.

The relief was short-lived. Within a few weeks, my anxiety over losing the chance to have children was replaced by a new kind worry: Had I had frozen enough eggs?

My panic, I’ve learned, is not uncommon. Women’s emotional reactions after egg freezing are complicated. In a study of nearly 500 women who had frozen their eggs between 2005 and 2011 at New York University Langone Medical Center, while 53 percent felt the experience was empowering, 36 percent found it both empowering and anxiety producing.

Many women I profiled in my book about how freezing their eggs affected their lives said their low-level unease about whether those eggs would give them babies later on never really went away. The chance of success depended on the quality of your eggs when they were frozen and the expertise of the people taking them out and putting them back in you. Obviously, you wanted to give yourself as many chances as possible.

I had nine eggs. That wasn’t a lot of chances. I would be lucky if a handful survived thawing and fertilization and grew into thriving embryos. What if I miscarried? What if there was something wrong with my uterine lining, and the precious embryos couldn’t attach? But the possibility that bothered me most: What if I loved motherhood so much that I wanted several children? By the time I met the right man and got going, I would likely be out of time, and my meager stockpile would only go so far. I was the oldest of four, and I loved being part of a big family. I liked the sense of belonging, the symmetry of kids and parents in the car on long trips, the big dinners with people who got your jokes.

When I was younger, I always wanted three children. But that was before creeping age and a hard breakup forced me to renegotiate my desires: Maybe you could be happy with one, I told myself. Maybe you’ll get lucky and conceive twins. But I had yet to know what it would feel like to hold my firstborn. Would I have awakened a deep longing too late?

Before I started freezing, I felt helpless to stop the slow fade of my fertility. But when a nurse handed me a Post-it with the number 9 circled, the value of my eggs became crystal clear, and freezing more became a mission. I once heard a doctor at a conference speculate that women could become addicted to egg freezing. That makes sense to me on some level. That sense of security and control over my life was one of the best feelings I have ever experienced. I had been given a second chance, a reprieve. Suddenly, anything else that money could buy – a house, a wedding, a vacation – seemed to pale in comparison to safeguarding my chance to have children.

Fertility doctors don’t have a consensus about how many eggs you should freeze; I was told I should aim for anywhere from 12 to 30. That would be enough for two to four embryo transfers, each of which has a 30 percent to 50 percent chance of resulting in a pregnancy. But banking in bulk hasn’t been an option for most women. Each retrieval cycle costs $10,000 to $12,000 and usually nets eight to 14 eggs. At some clinics, prices have dropped to $7,000 per cycle — still out of many people’s reach. One new program begun last month at Shady Grove Fertility, which has clinics in the Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia areas, offers freezers under 37 the chance to put away 20 eggs within four cycles for $12,500.

For the next near, I froze in a frenzy. I plundered my savings. I accepted help from my parents. I got a package deal in Canada. I tried two kinds of stimulation methods in New York. I bought generic fertility drugs from Spain through a British online pharmacy. I spent more than a year bloated in fat pants and cranky from hormones. But $50,000 later, I had stashed away 70 eggs. I won’t know until I try to thaw them in the next few years whether my actions were obsessive hoarding or the smartest decision I have ever made.

About

We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more